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A COLD ENTHUSIAST 


BY 


HUTCHINS HAPGOOD 



A COLD ENTHUSIAST 








A COLD ENTHUSIAST 

BY 

HUTCHINS HAPGOOD 


PRIVATELY PRINTED 
HILLACRE, RIVERSIDE 
CONNECTICUT 

1913 


REPRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION 

by permission of The Globe 


T3L WO 
. S4 VVi 



A COLD ENTHUSIAST 


One of the most unique men 
in the country is Theodore 
Schroeder, secretary and princi¬ 
pal fighter of the Free Speech 
League, compiler of the “Free 
Speech Anthology,” author of 
“Free Speech for Radicals,” 
“Obscene Literature and Consti¬ 
tutional Law,” and many articles 
in scientific and professional mag¬ 
azines. 

“Cold logic” is the phrase most 
often used by Theodore Schroe- 
der. He is under the illusion that 
his life is governed by his intel- 


A COLD ENTHUSIAST 


lect. He thinks his determined, 
disinterested and public-spirited 
work is done in a “cold logical” 
spirit, that it is the pure reason 
that leads him on. He thinks he 
dislikes feeling, since feeling 
leads the mind astray, but it seems 
to me that he has more feeling 
than most of the people I know. 

Schroeder began bucking the 
world when he was fifteen. All 
kinds of jobs and various kinds 
of boxcars as beds fell to his lot. 
His changing occupations took 
him all over the northwestern 
states. He now attributes the 
peculiarity of his life and work 
to the fact that he was never 
long enough in one place to feel 
its public opinion. His mind 
was never “standardized,” as he 
put it to me. He worked his way 




HUTCHINS HAPGOOD 


in college, but never stood well in 
his. courses, though he knew how 
to use knowledge. His training 
in engineering enabled him, when 
quite a boy, to do survey and 
forerunning work for various rail¬ 
roads at a high salary. He would 
jump out on a job and then jump 
back to the university, where he 
and the janitor struggled to see 
which would get a degree first. 

When very young Schroeder 
underwent the belligerent influ¬ 
ence of Robert Ingersoll. Wherev¬ 
er he went, he debated violently. 
All prejudices and injustices he 
dealt with with energy, as he 
thinks in a spirt of cold logic, 
but I think there was some heat 
in it. He saved in a few years 
a good deal of money and picked 
up some knowledge of law. In 




A COLD ENTHUSIAST 


his early twenties he went to 
Salt Lake City, moved partly by 
the desire to take the side of an 
oppressed people, as he thought. 

But after he had lived there 
for some time, where he practised 
law, he began to see, as he thought, 
the subversive character of Mor- 
monism, and, characteristically, 
about the time Mormonism in 
political alliance with its form¬ 
er opponents was in power again 
Schroeder opposed it. He pub¬ 
lished a little magazine called 
“Lucifer’s Lantern/’ in which he 
shed rational light, designed to 
dissipate the noxious shadows of 
an obscene religion. He collected 
a big library on Mormonism, and 
the enemies of the church now ap¬ 
pealed to him for information. 

He had a very big law prac- 




HUTCHINS HAPGOOD 


tice, badly paid, because he took 
any case which enabled him to 
fight injustice. He got the repu¬ 
tation of being the most litigious 
man in the West. When an ex¬ 
press company, for instance, at¬ 
tempted to cheat a citizen out of 
25 cents, Schroeder brought suit. 
In such cases, he would put in 
a thousand dollars’ worth of time 
and energy if necessary, to get 
results, and often without pay. It 
was just his cold, dispassionate 
character that enabled him to do 
that. He is entirely without 
feeling—he thinks. It is math¬ 
ematics that gives strength to his 
elbow. 

Money came easy to Theodore 
Schroeder, but he gave up his 
chances to make it in unnecessari¬ 
ly large amounts in order to devote 




A COLD ENTHUSIAST 


himself to cold logic. He came 
to New York about twelve years 
ago, and since then has devoted 
himself to the cause of free speech 
and to the writing of books and 
articles. 

If there is anybody, anywhere, 
whose freedom of expression is 
interfered with by Comstock, Mrs. 
Grundy, the courts, the police, 
Theodore Schroeder takes up the 
fight, whether it is a clergyman, 
a lawyer disbarred for contempt 
of court, an unpopular anarchist, 
whether Schroeder agrees with 
the oppressed person or not, and 
he generally does not, yet he gives 
him aid and comfort, legally, 
financially, in written propa¬ 
ganda. No matter how much like 
a “crank” the suppressed person 
may appeal* to be, Schroeder’s in- 




HUTCHINS HAPGOOD 


terest is maintained. His cold 
logic sustains his interest, even in 
objects generally supposed to be 
unworthy. 

Some unsympathetic individu¬ 
als might regard Schroeder as a 
fanatic. But his life is ruled by 
reason and a passion for science. 
He is often seen with enthusiasts 
with whom he completely dis¬ 
agrees. But he wants to help them 
to express themselves. He loves 
them because they are oppressed. 

I asked him the other day why, 
if he was simply a cold logical 
scientist, he cared so much about 
individuals being mistreated. 

“It is an enlarged social con¬ 
sciousness,” he replied. “I can 
see that if one person is oppressed 
because of his opinions, every¬ 
body might be. I might be. For 





A COLD ENTHUSIAST 


it all gets back to selfishness. I 
simply see a little further than 
other selfish people, and I want 
to be forehanded and strengthen 
the cause which ultimately pro¬ 
tects me, even if my case doesn’t 
seem to come in at the time.” 

I asked Mr. Schroeder if, in 
his opinion, there ought to be any 
limit to freedom of speech. 

“Not as such,” he replied. “If 
it can actually be shown that 
something a man said worked in¬ 
jury to property or person, rep¬ 
aration under our present sys¬ 
tem may justly be demanded on 
the ground that the words were 
a part cause of the specific in¬ 
jury, but in each case actual and 
material injury must be proved. 

“Speech itself should always be 
free. One should be free to ad- 




HUTCHINS HAPGOOD 


vocate murder if one wanted to, 
and ought not to be prosecuted 
unless a murder occurs and the 
advocacy can be proved to be a 
necessary part of the cause of the 
murder. If it is shown that a 
man instigated a specific murder 
which occurred, he can justly be 
prosecuted as an accessory there¬ 
to. But if he advocates murder, 
and no murder follows as a 
proved part of his advocacy, he 
cannot safely be prosecuted, and 
ought not to be.” 

Passionately interested—in 
spite of his cold logic—as Mr. 
Schroeder is in free speech, he is 
even more interested in his scien¬ 
tific studies of religion. He is 
preparing a book, which he deems 
his magnum opus, on the eroto- 
genesis of religion, some prelim- 





A COLD ENTHUSIAST 


inary articles on which he has al¬ 
ready had published in various 
scientific and radical periodicals. 

His study of the Mormon 
Church was one of the first things 
which started him on what he 
now regards as his main work, 
which is to show the sexual origin 
of all religions. His method of 
research is, he says, a purely sci¬ 
entific method, and I believe it is. 
But he says his purpose is dic¬ 
tated not by emotions or feeling, 
which he distrusts. 

I myself feel, rather than think, 
that there is something wrong in 
his cold logical reasoning about 
religion, but I believe that every 
civilized man would recognize the 
great importance of Theodore 
Schroeder’s work in the interest 
of free speech. 







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